THE FLESHEATERS, DIVINE HORSEMEN, CHRIS D

Chris D(esjardins). is one of those great rock and roll characters who came up out of L.A. punk scene of the late 70s' - the same scene that gave us X, The Screamers, and The Blasters.  Over the years he's been an author, poet, producer, actor, filmmaker, film teacher, and film and music critic, with a bent towards Tarantino-esque obsessions (grindhouse, gangster, asian and horror films).  And he's a rock and roll singer.  As Jay Hinman put it in his tribute article at Perfect Sound Forever:

A word has come up in many descriptions of Desjardins’ voice, a word you rarely see elsewhere: YOWL. Yowl is what Chris D. did with this magnificent voice -- not yell nor howl, no no no – YOWL. For the uninitiated, imagine Richard Hell at his inebriated best, say on "Love Come in Spurts" or "Down at the Rock and Roll Club." Now drown that voice in gallons of gasoline and let it thrash up to the surface screaming & clawing. Ladies and gentlemen, yowling. At his best, Chris D. had a voice of skin-crawling beauty and intensity. If he had been just a rote screamer that’d be one thing, but Desjardins wrenched his words through haunting whispers and banshee-like shrieks, very often in the exact same syllable. 

D. formed The Flesheaters around a rather loose line-up (original members were soon replaced by a floating amalgam including Dave Alvin, Steve Berlin, John Doe and D.J. Bonebrake) in the late 70's, and released a series of increasingly interesting LP's, that started off as raw punk energy, but soon began to fuse Stooges-esque jazz/punk excursions, African-sounding rhythms, and the barest hints of country and blues (especially in D's hellhound-on-my-trail/burning-love lyrical modes -  "wonderful bleeding collages of B-movie dementia, street crime, Mexican Catholicism and Dionysian punk spurt poetics."as Byron Coley put it).

The Flesheaters petered out in 1983, with D. recording a new album (Time Stands Still) which, depending on how you look at it, is his first solo album or the first album by his new band, Divine Horsemen.  DH was less jazz and Stooges-influenced than the Flesheaters, with a strong country influence running through it.  With singer and wife Julie Christensen aboard, they clearly owed a debt to X.  Unfortunately, they also owed a debt to AC/DC, and their music tended to be rather hamfisted, clubbing the songs to death and robbing them of their more interesting possibilities.  Still it was enjoyable music.  After the dissolution of that band - and his marriage to Christensen - D. formed a new ensemble, Stone By Stone, who recorded a now rare album (I Pass For Human) before renaming themselves The Flesheaters, under which nom de plume they recorded several more albums, the last in 2004.  Chris D. occasionally performs with a version of The Flesheaters to this day, but seems more focused on writing and teaching.

The Flesheaters Official Site
Chris D. Wiki
Flesheaters - Allmusic
Divine Horsemen - Allmusic
Flesh Eaters Tribute by Jay Hinman at Perfect Sound Forever

Essential Listening

None of the Flesheaters albums is truly great.  But A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die is damn close. The others are worthwhile listening.  Same goes for Divine Horsemen's catalog, most of which is out of print.  I've heard I Pass For Human is pretty good - but I've never gotten the chance to hear it.

Reading

Chris D's book "A Minute To Pray A Second To Die"

ANOTHER FLESH EATERS LIVE VIDEO I SOMEHOW CAN'T EMBED